TRUST IN SCIENCE
Erik Bye September 28, 2025
In a Norwegian net-magazine (forskning.no), there is now a thought-provoking article about research and trust:
"Propaganda and disinformation challenge trust in research"
The preamble reads:
"CHRONICLE: Knowledge provides security, good lives and competitiveness, but the research-based knowledge society requires that people know about the research and have trust in it."
This is conveyed by the CEO of the Research Council of Norway, Mari Sundli Tveit.
She writes:
"The research-based knowledge society is increasingly challenged by both disinformation and propaganda. Over half of the population believes that this can affect people's trust in research.
Eight out of ten Norwegians have a high degree of trust in research. The proportion has remained stable over many years. Now we see that Norwegians' trust in certain fields, including research on renewable energy and climate change, is decreasing. Trust in research within schools and education has also fallen. In the long term, this may challenge the trust between society and research.
For research to be put into use, it must be of high quality and be known. People must be allowed to participate in research and become familiar with the methods and contributions of the study."
In conclusion:
"Research provides the knowledge we need in uncertain times and in times that require restructuring and more innovation. Our decision-making basis will be better if it is based on research-based knowledge."
My comments:
I had expected the article to have gone a little more thoroughly into the two topics highlighted, with decreasing trust:
"Renewable energy" and "Climate change"
Tveit points to the lack of trust and states, without any further ado, that declining trust in the two topics is a societal problem, is destructive and obviously completely wrong.
Since she does not point to specific details of these two issues, I will leave the topic of renewable energy aside.Although it would have been tempting to look at «The Green Deal» because Ola Borten Moe (a Norwegian politician) has characterized this as “insane in the system”, and Sylvi Listhaug (a Norwegian politician) has referred to it as “self-harm at a high level”:
But since I perceive the declining trust in the research field of "climate change" as an existential scientific problem, I will only look at this in detail.
The director has completely misunderstood.
She believes that disinformation and propaganda are the main problems related to the trust of the knowledge message that is conveyed by the Climate Panel, IPCC.
This is the view of the highest Council in research in Norway. There is no doubt here, the Climate Panel conveys the truth, and everything else is disinformation, propaganda and weakens the trust in climate research of the Norwegian people.
It is not possible to shoot at a target much worse. The director misses the mark and represents the opposite of what one would expect in a controversial scientific issue.
Firstly, there are two camps on the issue of climate change, pro and against manmade climate change. This should be enough for the Research Council to appreciate the debate. They should have praised it. Instead, it is problematic for society that people disagree scientifically. This is an existential problem for science.
The IPCC is wrong.
Moreover, there are kilos of documentation that show that the IPCC is wrong, is on a wild path, and is helping to indoctrinate an entire world with an erroneous view of climate change:
1. The climate hypothesis lacks scientific documentation.
2. The CO2 hypothesis is fundamentally wrong, especially because the climate cannot be modeled.
3. The IPCC climate models are incorrectly constructed, and place too much emphasis on CO2 data in the models.
4. The temperature changes before the CO2 level, so CO2 cannot be the cause of global warming.
5. The climate targets are political inventions.
6. The climate sensitivity is calculated to be remarkably close to or equal to zero. Then the climate sensitivity cannot cause any temperature increase, even if the CO2 level increases in the atmosphere.
That the Research Council views a scientific debate as a societal problem is not only disturbing. It is downright frightening and contributes to weakening the trust in research.
Who is going to tell the Research Council that they are wrong in their view of the reasons for declining trust in climate research?